Jefferson Family Association Delays Decision On Hemings Descendants

A Report On Membership For Slave Mistress' Offspring Had Been Promised At Reunion.

May 04, 2000|By Michael Kilian, Washington Bureau.

WASHINGTON — The association representing the descendants of Thomas Jefferson is putting off for at least another year the decision whether to accept descendants of Jefferson's slave mistress, Sally Hemings, as members of the family.

The announcement ends hopes that the long-smoldering controversy would be resolved at the association's annual family reunion and business meeting this weekend in Charlottesville, Va., as the association had promised.

Some of Hemings' African-American descendants are boycotting the meeting because of what they term the "unpleasant" way they were treated by some members of the all-white Monticello Association at last year's gathering.

The issue has attracted worldwide attention and rekindled debate about racist American slavery laws and practices that permitted the Founding Father and champion of liberty to keep a young woman as a privately owned sex partner.

The case has been an embarrassment to Jefferson admirers and apologists for the antebellum South, in part because Hemings was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha, and three-quarters white.

Earlier this year, the effort to win family acceptance for Hemings' mixed-race descendants gained substantial support when the foundation that owns and operates Jefferson's Monticello estate in Charlottesville concluded there is a "strong likelihood" that the author of the Declaration of Independence fathered one, if not all, of Hemings' 10 children.

Responding to a 1998 DNA test that established a genetic link between Jefferson's white and black descendants, the family association last spring created a study committee of its own to determine who was entitled to membership and what criteria would establish official descent from Jefferson.

Though a year has passed, the committee has failed to reach its promised goals.

"It was expected that the committee would have arrived at a recommendation by the time of the year 2000 meeting," said Monticello Association President James Truscott. "However, the task has proven to be more complex than originally envisioned, and the committee has not yet developed its recommendations. ... It is highly unlikely that any significant decision on the subject will be announced this year."

The delay was strongly criticized by James Truscott's cousin, author Lucian Truscott, leader of the movement to allow Hemings' African-American descendants into the association.

"As I understand it, the committee as of January hadn't even had a meeting," Lucian Truscott said. "They're not going to issue a report. They don't have one. They haven't worked hard enough, and they don't know what to do."

He said he would not try to force a vote on acceptance of the Hemings descendants, though he regretted the delay.

Lucian Truscott brought the controversy to a boil last spring by inviting the Hemings descendants to the family reunion and business meeting as his guests, the first time they had attended the annual gatherings.

They were treated cordially at a reception on the grounds of Jefferson's mountaintop Monticello estate and a dinner at a nearby colonial tavern. But some white descendants tried unsuccessfully to have them removed from the business meeting because they were not members of the association.

In addition to official recognition as Jefferson descendants, membership confers the privilege of being buried in the Jefferson family cemetery at Monticello, which African-American Hemings descendants long have been denied.

The bylaws of the Monticello Association state only that "all lineal descendants of Thomas Jefferson shall be members," making no mention of how descent is to be determined.

In a letter to the association, Robert Golden, president of the Woodson Family Association of Hemings descendants, explained why he would not attend this year's event.

"Your gracious invitation ... brought back pleasant and not so pleasant memories of last year's meeting," he wrote. "Having reviewed those events in my mind, especially the unpleasant occurrences that my family and I experienced at the business meeting, I shall not be attending."

Byron Woodson, a relative, said he has not been invited to the meeting but will travel to Charlottesville to press the Hemings' case.

He is writing a book, "President in the Family," based in part on a 400-page genealogy researched by his mother, to be published in February.

"We might not have court records in [Charlottesville's] Albermarle County, but we have a whole lot of information that I think the American public will accept," he said.

Sally Hemings (1773-1835) was the daughter of Betty Hemings, the half-black offspring of an English sea captain named Hemings and a slave woman. Sally Hemings' father was John Wayles, a wealthy Virginia landowner and slave trader who was the father of Jefferson's wife, Martha.

As all concede, this relationship makes all Hemings' descendants full cousins to the descendents of Jefferson's children by Martha.